Archive for the ‘gpl violation’ Tag

It seems that Microsoft is infested with a dangerous cancer; the cancer of open source. Just a few month ago they released the a part of the source code to their Hyper-V virtualiser. This came after allegations of GPL violations; apparently Microsoft used GPL code and was thus forced to free the source code to comply with the terms of the known Free Software License. Now the open source bug bit Microsoft again; a Windows tool, developed by a subcontractor, was using code licensed unter the GPL. Looks like someone thought he could go the easy way and just ‘borrow’ open sourced code.

Now I doubt that Microsoft (or anyone within Microsoft) deliberately used GPL code. Actually, I’m quite sure that they have strict rules against that kind of things. However, as Steve Balmer put it; open source is like cancer; it can appear any where, any time and there is no cure. Microsoft is heavily dependant on third-party developers. And would guess that not all of Microsoft’s suppliers have the same strict rules as Microsoft, so this kind of thing will probably happen more and more. Microsoft cannot audit all the code they receive from contractors, can they?

Now what are they going to do? Require their contractors to open source everything? Probably not, but we’ll see.